To celebrate Vikings Live, we have replaced our Roman alphabet with the runic alphabet used by the Vikings, the Scandinavian ‘Younger Futhark’. The ‘Younger Futhark’ has only 16 letters, so we have used some of the runic letters more than once or combined two runes for one Roman letter.

Recommend this exhibition

Exhibition supporters

Asaki Masakatsu and Uragami Mitsuru of Shunga in Japan LLP are
proud to sponsor Shunga: sex and pleasure in Japanese art,
an exhibition of major historical significance in the study of
Japanese art.

Shunga, Japanese erotic art created in the Edo period from
1600–1868, is a genre that has received increasing appreciation in
recent years having been considered a taboo subject in Japan for
most of the twentieth century. Even today shunga is still not
displayed in Japanese public museums, therefore it is with great
pleasure that Mr Asaki and Mr Uragami are partnering with the
British Museum and SOAS to bring about this culturally significant
exhibition. They hope that their support will encourage further
scholarly study of shunga and enable visitors to the exhibition to
enjoy and appreciate the work in the generous spirit of laughter in
which it was created.